Volume 39, Number 4 · February 13, 1992
Collapsing Modernism
By Witold Rybczynski
The Details of Modern Architecture
by Edward R. Ford
MIT Press, 371 pp., $60.00
Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade
by Vincent Scully
St. Martin's Press, 388 pp., $40.00
A stroll down a city street will convince even a casual observer that something has changed drastically in the world of architecture. Where buildings used to be gray or brick-colored or, in exceptional cases like the CBS building in Manhattan, black, they're now shiny gold, acid green, shocking pink, anything you want. There is variegated, patterned marble and granite everywhere—on the outside and on the inside, on lobby walls and floors, even in elevators. The severe, puritanical steel-and-glass boxes of the Sixties and Seventies have been replaced by buildings that exhibit a surprising variety and richness of forms. They are not adorned with I-beams and venting grills but with ceremonial arched entrances, pedimented roofs, and ornamental friezes.
Review, 4087 words
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